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6 Strikes, 8 Days, 35 Dead: The U.S. Drone War in Pakistan Is Back

A U.S. airman greets an MQ-9 Reaper as it returns to Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan from a mission, December 2010. Photo: U.S. Air Force

A U.S. airman greets an MQ-9 Reaper as it returns to Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan from a mission, December 2010. Photo: U.S. Air Force

The sixth U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in 2013 has killed at least eight people, as if to announce the impending arrival at the CIA of the drone campaign's chief advocate.

About 19 miles east of Mirin Shah, the main city in the tribal province of North Waziristan, at least one missile fired by a U.S. Predator or Reaper hit a compound Monday night, killing an alleged, unnamed "foreign tactical trainer" for al-Qaida, according to Pakistani intelligence sources talking to Reuters. Another strike hit the nearby village of Eissu Khel, the Long War Journalreports. In addition to the alleged al-Qaida member, at least seven others were killed and three more were injured.

While the statistical sample is small, it's starting to sound like the drone campaign over Pakistan is ticking back up after a recent decline. A trio of drone-fired missile strikes between Wednesday and Thursday killed a Pakistani Taliban commander and at least 19 others. Another on Sunday reportedly killed another 17 people, bringing the estimated death toll in this young year to 35.

The U.S. launched 43 drone strikes in Pakistan in 2012, according to the tally kept by the New America Foundation, reflecting a two-year downward trend from 2010's high of 122 strikes. The average time in between strikes last year was 7.7 days. But eight days into 2013, there have already been six deadly drone strikes, for reasons that remain unclear. It's worth noting that senior Obama administration officials recently reversed their earlier rhetoric that the U.S. was on the verge of defeating al-Qaida and have returned to describing a protracted shadow campaign.

But even if the White House doesn't know a target's name, he can still be marked for death. Obama has provided the CIA with authority to kill not only suspected militants, but unknown individuals it believes follow a pattern of militant activity, in what it terms "signature strikes." The drone program has killed an undisclosed number of civilians. A recent study conducted by Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School's human-rights branch explored how they've torn the broader social fabric in tribal Pakistan, creating paranoia that neighbors are informing on each other and traumatizing those who live under the buzz of Predator and Reaper engines. Those traumas are raising alarm bells from some of the U.S.' most experienced counterterrorists.

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former chief of the Joint Special Operations Command and the NATO war in Afghanistan, has been publicly ambivalent on the drones for months. In July, he told an elite audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival about how a drone spotted an Afghan man "digging in the ground" at night, leading his forces to order a deadly helicopter attack on the presumption the man was burying a bomb. McChrystal later learned that tilling soil at night is a tradition among Afghan farmers, and the dead man posed no threat.

Brennan's nomination is renewing the national discussion about drone strikes. His confirmation hearing to be CIA director, as yet unscheduled, provides senators with perhaps their best public opportunity to explore the future of the drone campaign – if they're willing to take it. "There's certainly the potential for much more transparency of the drones and other programs, but it'll take Congress" to step up, says Amy B. Zegart, an intelligence expert at Stanford University. "No CIA director shares details of activities for the public" of his own volition.